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DURING THE LATE
NINETENTH CENTURY, EUROPEANS CONQURED AFRICA AND ASIA.

A. Critically
examine the kind of arguments Europeans used to justify these actions
and whether we can trust these arguments and:

European nations
and Japan at the end of the 19th century spread their influence and
control throughout the continent of Asia.Southeast Asia, unlike many
other parts of the world on the eve of European expansion, long had
been a cosmopolitan region acquainted with a diversity of peoples,
customs, and trade goods. The arrival of Europeans in force in the
early 16th century (others had made visits earlier, beginning with
Marco Polo in 1292) caused neither wonderment nor fear. Long-distance
travel by then was no novelty, and already there was impressive
precedence for the arrival of foreign delegations rather than of
individual trading vessels. A century before the Portuguese first
arrived at Malice in 1509, that port and several of other in
Southeast Asia had been visited by a succession of Chinese fleets.
Between 1403 and 1433 Ming-dynasty China had sent several enormous
flotillas of as many as 63 large vessels and up to 30,000 people on
expeditions that carried them as far as Africa. The purpose of these
journeys, led by the Muslim court eunuch Cheng Ho, was to secure
diplomatic and trade advantages for the Chinese and to extend the
sovereign lustre of the ambitious Yung-lo Emperor. Yet, except for
efforts to regain Dai Viet (Vietnam) as a province, these expeditions
had no permanent military or colonial ambitions and did not much
disturb the Southeast Asian region. Perhaps in part because of the
sound defeat the Vietnamese handed a Ming occupying army in 1427,
China lost interest in its new and far-flung initiatives, and the
voyages came to an abrupt end.

Europeans
presented a rather different prospect for Southeast Asia, however,
above all because they sought riches and absolute control over the
sources of this wealth. The Europeans were few in number, often
poorly equipped, and generally could not claim great technological
superiority over Southeast Asians, but they were also determined,
often well-organized and highly disciplined fighters, and utterly
ruthless and unprincipled. Except for the Spanish in the Philippines,
they were not interested in colonization but rather in the control of
trade at the lowest financial cost. These characteristics made
Europeans a formidable–though by no means dominant–new force in
Southeast Asia.

B. Does the
novel, things fall apart offer a compelling picture of the
consequences of this conquest on conqured peoples?

In Things fall
apart, Okonkwo s relationship to the new comers is exacerbated by the
fact he has a very great deal at stake in maintaining the old ways.
All his hopes and dreams are rooted in the continuance of the new
ways helps to explain his extreme reaction. The missionaries were
often viewed as agents of imperalism. There is a saying common to
Native Americans and Africans alike which goes like this: Before the
white man came, we had the land and they had the bible. Now we have
the Bible and they have the land.

Though
Catholicism had shaped Latin-American and eastern Canadian culture,
and though it came to be at home in the United States, it also found
itself a worldwide presence for the first time in the 19th century.
This expansion was the result both of Western nations’ imperial
presence in Africa and Asia and of the rebirth of a missionary spirit
in Christendom.

Early missions
in Africa almost nothing remained of the strong early Christian
communities in the north. Through the centuries, North Africa had
become largely Muslim. The Muslim presence there offered more
resistance than did native African religionists in the remaining part
of the continent. Christians were not welcomed and were often
persecuted. Even in partly Christian Abyssinia (Ethiopia), where the
Coptic Church was prominent, Catholics were largely excluded except
between 1702 and 1839. An archbishopric was established in Algiers,
and in 1868, Archbishop Charles Lavigerie founded the White Fathers,
who were energetic but largely unsuccessful missionaries from that
base.

West Africa
presented obvious and persistent problems for all Christians, because
it was from there that European nations had carried on most of the
slave trade. Portuguese colonialists did help the Catholic Church
establish itself in parts of West Africa, but progress was slow.
Catholicism fared better in East Africa, particularly in Madagascar
and around Lake Victoria. Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika (now
Tanzania), for example, have thriving churches. The record was less
triumphant farther south, in no small measure because of Dutch and
British Protestant power. Yet there, as elsewhere, independent
missionary societies worked despite considerable hardship.

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